Topic 5.1 - The Enlightenment Flashcards
Enlightenment
It was a period of time when great thinkers changed the way society was viewed. The establishment of certain human rights evolved during this time.
Nationalism
`The feeling and movement of great devotion to one’s country, race, ethnicity, or religion in one area of the world.
Empiricism
The belief that knowledge comes from what you experience with your senses, from what you observe through your experience and through experience.
John Locke
An English philosopher who believed people were moral, reasonable creatures. He also believed that everyone is born with a set of ‘natural rights’.
Social Contract
A theoretical statement that everyone on earth agrees to have order.
Tabula rasa
A supposed condition that empiricists have attributed to the human mind before ideas have been imprinted on it by the reaction of the senses to the external world of objects.
Philosophes
Philosophers during the Enlightenment who studied social laws and what governed society.
Baron de Montesquieu
A French philosophe who liked the English parliament checking the king. He believed in the separation of powers in the government.
Voltaire
A French philosophe who challenged the government and nobility in his works. He had a high influence on governments of the time.
Jean-Jacques Rousseau
A French philosophe who believed people were naturally good but became corrupt over time.
Adam Smith
A British economist who supported laissez-faire government.
Laissez-faire
“Leave it alone” in French. It was an economic idea that the government shouldn’t play a large role in the economy.
Capitalism
An economic system in which the means of production are privately owned and operated for profit.
Deism
The idea that a god exists, but they only set laws that govern the universe and rarely interfere.
Thomas Paine
A strong believer in deism and fought to defend it.
